The History of The Rainbow Project Plymouth
​1991 - 2021

In 1989 the people’s revolution in Romania removed Nicolae Ceausescu from power and he was subsequently executed.  When the journalists were able to enter they were appalled to discover the state of the children in the orphanages, and we all remember so well the images that were sent around the world. 

When Ceausescu had been in charge both abortion and contraception had been discouraged, he believed that increased population would increase economic growth.  Families were unable to afford large numbers of children and many of them were abandoned to the orphanages where they suffered institutionalised neglect and abuse. 
​Any disabled children were sent to the homes for the ‘irrecoverable’ which were even worse.
​When these atrocities were brought to light in 1990 many people across the world were moved to send truckloads of aid but there was still bribery and corruption in Romania and some of this aid disappeared to be sold at the local markets.
In 1991 Jenny and Keith Scott were planning a holiday, but after hearing of the plight of these children and being particularly moved at one church service by the prayers spoken for Romania and its people, Jenny felt she had to do something.  She organised some friends to go with them and in two cars they travelled out to Romania with as much aid as they could, including Farley’s Rusks.

Keith, Jenny’s husband, had initially been reluctant to go but at the last minute one of the drivers had to back out and Keith stepped in.  On that first trip they ran out of petrol in the town square of Dej in Romania and were at a loss as to how they were going to proceed.  God intervened and a lovely girl called Liliana Dragoman, who was taking a walk with her then boyfriend, Emile, came over to them and asked if they could help. 
Hospitality was offered by Liliana and her family and that was the start of a friendship that saw Jenny and Keith travel many times to Romania, taking humanitarian aid of all sorts. 
Their granddaughter who was only 8 or 9 years old at the time came up with the name Rainbow as an acronym for the phrase ROMANIANS ARE IN NEED BEFORE OUR WANTS. The Rainbow Project Plymouth had begun!
It was in 1990 that Mike and Ruth Dymond were at a Spring Harvest Christian Conference when a Romanian pastor came on stage and told of the plight of the Romanian people after the 1989/90 revolution.  Mike was very emotionally drawn to help in some way but had no clue as to how he could accomplish this. 

In 1992 Mike, Ruth and their two sons, Matthew and Luke joined Newquay Christian Centre (NCC) and it was a few years later in 1997/98 that this church began to raise funds and collect goods for The Rainbow Project Plymouth, as Jenny and Keith were continuing to take aid out to Romania when they were able.

Mike felt a strong call to get involved in helping the people of Romania as much as he could.  Lots of donations of aid for The Rainbow Project Plymouth were stored at the Newquay church, but just before this collection of aid was due to be taken to Plymouth, sadly, the church had a break in and most of the aid was either stolen or destroyed, but the very generous people of NCC, the town of Newquay and the surrounding areas soon collected more items to replace those lost.
In the summer of 1999 NCC sent a few members out to Romania with Keith Scott, they were, Douglas and Fiona Knight and Maureen Wright.  They had many difficulties on this trip and were delayed on several borders due to paperwork problems, but eventually they arrived and delivered the goods to Edi Varvara of the Trade Off Foundation who helped to distribute the aid they had brought.​
In September 2000, Mike Dymond travelled to Romania with Keith Scott.  One of the places they visited with aid was the Tuberculosis Preventorium in Ilisua where since 1952 children had been sent to prevent them contracting TB.  

​After this visit Mike was in tears.  He was upset by the poor conditions of the buildings, the lack of recreation items for the children, but mostly about the state of the footwear the children had.  They either had torn shoes, or no shoes at all.
Mike vowed to get shoes for all 100 children of all ages and sizes within one year.  ​
As soon as he got back he set about raising funds to buy shoes for the children. 

Mike did two Radio Cornwall appeals and with his wife, Ruth, he did several fund-raising events.  Soon money came flooding in even from as far away as Essex and Nottingham. 

The following Summer, 2001, Mike, Ruth and Keith travelled again to Romania in a 7 ½ ton lorry carrying more aid and all three of them took turns driving the lorry on the three-day outward trip. 

​Edi Varvara was again there in Dej to meet them and help distribute the aid.  With the money raised, he also bought shoes for the 120 children of all sizes and ages, along with two pairs of socks each as well as other necessary items.
Mike and Ruth did many more trips and on several of these Mike’s employer, Mr Jeremy Deeble of Darley Ford Transport in Liskeard Cornwall donated the use of his artic tractor unit to tow a big trailer that the Rainbow Project had bought to enable them to take aid in larger loads per trip.

Then in 2004 Mike was moved to action again by the state of the toilet facilities and lack of basic hygiene at the village school in Lozna, one of the villages Jenny and Keith have been helping since the start of the The Rainbow Project Plymouth. 

Mike asked his friend Jonathan Bulford of Goonhavern, Cornwall, to help with this project and Jon was more than pleased to agree.   After fund-raising events in Cornwall and appeals on Radio Cornwall and to the people of Plymouth, enough money was raised to pay for the materials and the cost of travel to complete the task of building new toilets and hygiene facilities at the village school.

​This took several trips out to Romania and was completed with a lot of help from the local villagers.
In 2005 The Rainbow Project Plymouth became a charity in its own right and registered with the Charity Commissions.  What had started as the inspiration of one woman had grown to include many volunteers and helpers who felt that something more formal was necessary to enable the charity to develop.

Trustees were appointed along with the usual officers, Chairman, Secretary, and Treasurer.
In the same year Barbara (Bee) Pugsley became involved in the Rainbow Project.  She is currently our chairperson.  This is how she tells the story.
“My husband John and I used to read the Christian Herald newspaper and on one occasion I read about a church in Bristol who had been inspired to write out the whole of the Bible by hand.  While one of the ladies was writing out her chapter she was miraculously healed of a chronic health condition.  I was very challenged and thought what a good idea it would be if our church could do the same but as we are only a small chapel, we decided to write out just the New Testament and Psalms. Barbara Clifford asked me if a friend of hers, who was a Buddhist, could write out some of the bible, Barbara had been praying for Lee for about 20 years, but as Lee wrote out the word of God she was wonderfully converted!

We then wondered what we should do with the written New Testament and we were told that Keith and Jenny Scott, who travelled to Romania taking aid, would be pleased to take the Bible with them, for the Romanians to read and help them to learn English.

I was subsequently made redundant from my job as Manager of the community midwives for Plymouth, South Hams and Tavistock, the Lord gave me a text to encourage me Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11: For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

When my friend Dick Bell heard that I had been made redundant he asked me if I would raise £5,000 for him to join the British Hovercraft expedition up the Yangtze River in China.
I did not realise that fund raising would soon take over my life!

Having been made redundant I was offered a small Government Grant and training in running a business and set up Jay Bee Arts and Crafts selling my husband John’s Art, ceramics, and sculptures.  After John sadly died on 31st December 2004, I was asked to join the Rainbow Project and I soon became very involved.”
One of the ways in which Bee became involved was in helping out at the Pepperpot charity shop which the Rainbow Project had opened in 2001.  This is a small shop in the centre of Plymouth, shaped like a pepperpot, and part of the Methodist Central Hall. 

This was a consistent source of income for the charity for some years and was ably run by a number of dedicated volunteers including, Bernie Massey, Martha Smith, Patrick and Christine Vosper and many others. 

One visitor to the shop was a Romanian lady called Claudia Tanase who was pregnant at the time but so pleased that the charity was helping those in her home country.  She has continued to support us ever since then. 
​The Pepperpot shop was eventually closed when the Methodist church was redeveloped.
Mike and Ruth Dymond made their last aid trip to Romania in 2009 with Mike’s sister Jeanette and brother-in-law Chris Dare.  Some people in Wales had knitted winter hats for the children at the Ilisua home. Chris and Jeanette had also made a large donation for food and a truck load of logs for heating the centre.

May 2009 was to be the first time that Bee, along with her sister Jill Stidson and Bernie Massey, (who would in October of that year become a trustee of the charity), visited Romania.

Bernie’s diary of that trip tells of a fact finding visit that moved them all deeply.  They visited the school in Lozna where in 2004 The Rainbow Project Plymouth had helped to install new toilets and shower facilities. 

​They also helped to make up and deliver food parcels to the elderly of the village.  However, they felt that the priority for the charity at that time was in obtaining aid for the children’s home in Ilisua.
The children’s home, opened originally in 1952 as a TB Preventorium, using an old mansion house building which had been taken over by the government.  The building was in a sad state when The Rainbow Project Plymouth first visited there in the late 1990’s.  Over those early years we had paid for a number of repairs to the building, including new windows but sadly this building was reclaimed by its original owner and the children’s home moved into other buildings on the 7.5-acre site. 

Subsequently The Rainbow Project Plymouth has contributed to other building works within the children’s home including a hospital wing, a shed for storing wood, an outside covered area for drying clothes, a new boiler and an outside covered area where the children can play during inclement weather.

The home accepts children from 4 to 16 years of age and over the years we have sent blankets, pillowcases and clothes including hats scarves and gloves.  We have also sent other items such as walking sticks and crutches which Edi has distributed wherever he has seen the need.
​
Each year, since 2009, a few of the current Rainbow Project Plymouth team have visited Romania to see how we can best help.  We visit the children’s home at Ilisua and Edi Varvara and his wife Lili, have continued to help us since the mid 1990’s, and have proved to be invaluable in helping us see where the need is greatest and what we can do to help.
We have from time to time also visited The House of Hope, which is where Lili’s cousin Muna, who is married to Pastor John, offers places to about 6 or 8 girls who want to continue their education beyond high school and are willing to live within this Christian family. 
​They have in years past taken girls from the Ilisua children’s home but the last time we visited they had girls from other areas as well, some of them studying to be architects and lawyers. 
Amongst the donations that we have received for the children’s home, we were often given clothes and items for babies and toddlers.  This resulted in our involvement with Rora House, a Christian organisation in Liverton, Newton Abbot who for many years, through their associated charity the Aurora Christian Association (ACA), have supported a town in the south of Romania called Vulcan, a very poor area desperate for help.  This is where the baby and toddler items are now sent. 

The Aurora Christian Association (ACA) have a complex out in Vulcan which runs a canteen supplying lunch to the school children of the town and a number of elderly people. 

​ They also run kindergarten classes and out of school activities for local children.  One of their particular areas of outreach is a gypsy village attached to the town of Vulcan where families often live in small one room dwellings with no electricity or plumbing, using one small woodfired stove for cooking and an outside ‘long drop’ toilet.
Bee takes up the story, “We decided that it would be good to visit the work at Vulcan and see how we could help, on reading my Bible I came across the prayer of Jabez, ‘oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory that your hand would be with me, and God granted his request’. (1 Chronicles 4 verse 10.)  I believed that this was a promise to us that God would INDEED enlarge our territory and that his hand would be with us. I felt that this was encouragement to include more help for Rora House and the ACA community work in Romania.  
​After discussion with the committee however, some members were uneasy with this plan and stood down but were soon replaced with others and we have progressed with the Lord’s help beyond our expectations.”
The Rainbow Project continues to send items to Rora house in Newton Abbott which are sent by lorry to Vulcan.  

We have also helped several families in the Vulcan gypsy village and the surrounding villages to improve their situation. 

Recently we have helped Marianna and her family by part funding the supply of building materials for repairs and extra rooms to be built for her large family of seven children.

​Marianna’s building now has a roof, and windows and doors will be added soon. 
​Meralina is a widowed grandmother looking after her children and young grandchildren, who was living in two old, small touring caravans and fetching water from a nearby river.  We have part funded the building of two rooms on an existing concrete base on her property and she has already moved in.  
During the past our means of fundraising has included attending tabletop sales in various places around Plymouth, the Plymstock Festival and three times a year Bee, our chairperson holds a two-day sale at her home. 

These events always require lots of helpers to man the stalls and it has been pleasing to see that the younger generation has shown an interest.  
Over the years many items have been sent and gratefully received in the Dej area of Romania, including adult and children’s clothes, food and medicines, sewing machines, computers, cots, prams, wooden doors, portaloos, walking sticks and crutches. 

​Bicycles were sent to an orphanage in Beclean so that teenagers could get to their work placements.  We also sent school benches, desks, and a white board to a school in Clid.  Financial aid has been sent for specific items of food and medicine including surgical procedures for some of the children at the home in Ilisua including one who had a bladder problem and one who had a squint.  We have also helped a maternity hospital and a Bucharest family, as well as building projects, toilets at the Lozna school and windows for the children’s home in Ilisua.
2020, has been difficult for fundraising but our supporters have been very generous, and we have paid for six children to be tested for the coronavirus before they were allowed to return to the children’s home in Ilisua.  We also sent £10 per child to the children’s home for treats at Christmas, which we try to do each year.

A group of helpers meet at Bee’s home on Monday and Wednesday afternoons to sort all the goods that are donated, packing up those items that we can send direct to Edi for the needs at the children’s home and those items that we send to Aurora for the areas around Vulcan.  Anything that does not fall into these two categories gets priced for sale at our fundraising events. 
​We have also been able, through the talents of one of our more internet savvy helpers, to sell the more valuable donated items through e-bay.  This proved to be an invaluable source of income during lockdown continues to provide us with a good income.
Another initiative during  Covid-19 pandemic was to open up Bee’s garage, now called “Aladdin’s Cave”, for people to come and browse the bric-a-brac items for sale. It has continued and is open between 1:30 pm and 3:30 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.
This is a glimpse of what the Rainbow Project Plymouth has achieved over the last 30years and will be added to as the years progress, God willing.  If you have a particular story of the work of the Rainbow Project Plymouth we would love to hear from you.
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